No, I have not been on vacation. Or sabbatical. Or hiatus. Or even a work conference (though that did occur during my absence from my blog). No, I’ve been doing something much, much worse. Moving! That’s right. We finally went ahead and bought a house. After 5+ months of searching, much arguing and quite a few tears, we finally offered (twice) on a house on the other side of the valley. After an initial outright rejection, and then a few counteroffers, they finally accepted and it was a done deal. We are definitely paying more than we started out wanting to spend, but we also have more house than I thought we’d get for the money. So since the beginning of July, I feel like I’ve been lunging forward, head first, at breakneck speed through life, with no way to stop it or slow it down and no way to protect myself from any danger that I may literally run into on my way. It’s definitely not been the most pleasant experience in my life, but someone told me moving is the third most stressful thing that people go through. I believe it. Throw actually buying the place you’re moving into on top of that, and I think it ranks right up there toward the top. (I think #1 is death of a family member, so I am not so presumptuous as to assume my suffering has been worse than that!) And suddenly it’s August.
There are a ton of things that I need to write about, and my time away has certainly not been for lack of material. But I think I’ll just start with the most obvious thing: the move. While packing happened a little at a time over several weeks prior to the move, we were no where near ready once the day finally came. And boy did it come - in a whirlwind! We moved an entire household in two and a half days, and then spent the remainder of the third day cleaning the old residence. The good news is we got our full security deposit back. The bad news is that the new house has a garage and a spare bedroom packed wall-to-wall and nearly floor-to-ceiling with boxes and totes of various sizes, shapes and colors waiting to be unpacked, and the remainder of the house is cluttered with random full boxes, empty boxes and miscellaneous crap strewn everywhere. My fourth day away from work was spent unpacking as much as I could, but by that time the work had seriously slowed, as all my help had fled town (or, for some, back to their respective CLEAN residences.) No one room is, as of yet, fully unpacked, and certainly not fully functional. I made a very large dent in the mess in Sweetpea’s room the night before last, and unpacked probably six or so boxes just in there. I still can’t figure out how I had all that stuff packed into her tiny little bedroom. Or, for that matter, why a 4 ½ year-old needs that much stuff!
I am happy to report that my injury count as of right now is only limited to 9 bruises, 2 scratches and 1 broken nail. Ok, 10 bruises if you count the one on my cheek, but that one wasn’t my fault! That happened when Sweetpea decided to stand up all of a sudden and rammed the crown of her skull into my cheekbone. Ok, maybe 11 if you count the one I’m pretty sure I gave myself the night before last while trying to get an exceptionally large, but thankfully empty, box down the stairs, and dug the corner of it into my leg when it suddenly caught on the railing. Even so, any of you who know me well know that that’s pretty good considering the massive undertaking that was move, and the potential it had for injury. Especially since I can’t seem to walk through a doorway or get up from a desk without giving myself a bruise somehow, and at no time have less than two bruises somewhere on my body. My sister calls me a klutz, (and I’m not convinced she means it with love!) I disagree with that turn of phrase. I say I am hyper-focused. Meaning that I am generally so focused on what I am doing and where I am going that I don’t pay attention to what might be in my way, even if that something is a very large desk or even a wall. I regularly walk into walls, sometimes hard enough to knock myself backwards. One of my former co-workers got so used to it, he didn’t even look up anymore when I would ram into the door frame of my office – though he did glance up still when I would fall OUT of my office (don’t ask how I did that, because I don’t really know.) My mom tells me I’ve done these things since I was a child, and blames my near-sightedness for the problem, even though I wear contact lenses. Hey, what can I say? The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and it seldom matters to me if there is some other object in the middle of my straight line.
There have been some bad things we’ve had to deal with with the house. The former owners left a lot of the house still dirty. The furnace room, which doubles as a storage room, was actually left with a large pile of dirt and debris piled in the middle of the room. We found out, too, that that pile contained left over DeCon from the apparently former rodent problem they had in the house. While the inspector told us there were no mice or rats in the walls, it’s not so wonderful to find old DeCon floating around a room these people used for food storage, and in which we intended to keep the cats’ litter box. My cats are dumb enough they’d eat that crap. So we had to clean that up. The “craft room” was also filthy, and it looks to me like these people hadn’t vacuumed any room in the basement (which contains two bedrooms, the furnace room and the craft room) in several years. Plus, instead of leaving the garbage cans out for the city to pick up on trash day, they hauled them back behind the fence still completely full. To top that off, we are still finding odd items they left in the house. It’s become a little like a treasure hunt, with little things popping up here and there: a dining room table; a very old, very large chest of drawers; a workbench in the garage (ok, these three we knew about since they asked if we wanted them); a bookshelf; a whole set of cast iron pans plus two broiler pans in the oven drawer; a pretty hand-painted crafty shelf still hanging on a wall; a brand new oil air freshener in a linen closet; a shower curtain and liner complete with starfish hooks still hanging in one bathroom; curtains still hanging throughout the house; a quilt hanger still hanging on the wall; a small plastic trash can – full of trash, of course – under a bathroom sink; a child’s book on the back of a toilet; two unopened glass bottles of Coke from the 2004 Men’s College Basketball Final Four tournament; lots and lots of old Time Life magazine covers, including one from the assassination of JFK; and what seems like hundreds of pennies scattered throughout the house. While all of this is technically a breach of contract since they were supposed to have all items removed and the house clean and free of debris, I figure there’s no point now in screaming foul. Because what will be done about it? Nothing, as far as I can tell.
In addition we’re finding other things we’re not pleased about. The kitchen cabinets were not leveled and evened out when they were set, so the opening for the fridge, while standard size across the top, is approximately a ½ an inch too narrow across the bottom. Thus the cabinets on one side have to be moved, and we cannot install our microwave until that has been taken care of.
The house has two sliding glass doors, one of which was supplemented with a removable additional pane of glass with a pet door on the bottom. It was this addition that contained the locks, and how the door got past the inspector. When we moved in, we discovered that the addition had been removed, and suddenly the door doesn’t lock at all. The other door, which opens onto a balcony from the master bedroom, somehow managed to get past the inspector unnoticed, but it doesn’t lock either. Come to find out now, the doors are old enough that the home improvement stores not only don’t carry handles and locks to fit them, but also no longer carry the parts needed to retrofit them. So now, while two new doors were on the agenda to begin with, they have been moved up in priority.
We also discovered that the house has Hobo spiders, which, of course, is the part I am the LEAST happy about. My sister killed one in the basement the first night we were there, my mom scared several out from around the house in both the front and back yards while sweeping the patios, and I discovered one of their funnel webs in one of the bedrooms in the basement. I’ve killed several spiders since we moved in (but didn’t get close enough to find out their type), I had terrible, horrific nightmares both Sunday and Monday nights, I pick anything up that’s been on the floor in the family room with my fingertips and shake it out, and I’ve as yet only ventured once more into the basement. Again, how do these things happen to me? Me, Mrs. Mega Arachnophobe, moves into a house containing not only spiders, but spiders that can be extremely damaging if not deadly. It’s got to be karma. Maybe someone’s getting even for all those spiders I’ve killed over the years. After all, my mantra is “no spider lives in my house”. Or maybe Murphy has a more twisted sense of humor than I thought. Whatever the circumstance, I now have to have an exterminator come to the house and spray. With Hobos I’m not taking the chance with any store bought pesticide or spider bomb. I’m calling in the experts! We’re on the schedule to get sprayed for what looks like the beginning of next week. Until them I’m having an awful time relaxing in the house, and I’m counting the days until they all are dead.
So, I will try to post pics of the house as soon as I can figure out how to photo shop out the huge, cartoon-style numbers of the address nailed to the very front of the house. After all, there are some people who read my blog who I DON’T know! And while I seem to have no qualms in sharing every other detail in my life, as well as every thought that seems to come into my head, I’d like to keep my address a secret from those I don’t know. Wouldn’t want any stalkers you know. LOL! Anyway, a preview of coming attractions: pics of the new house, pics and stories from my trip to San Francisco for a work conference, pics and stories of our back-woods Jeep adventure in June, and several pics of cakes plus maybe a story or two. Stay tuned!
Friday, August 8, 2008
Monday, July 7, 2008
Bad Customer Service
Last week I had a conversation with a co-worker and fellow blogger. I would just like to say thanks Mandy! For being very diplomatic and polite when she reminded me that I do have a FEW regular readers out there who are wondering if I remember that I have a blog. (My words, not hers!) No, I didn’t forget that fact. Things have just been hectic. But we did discuss that I had something happen to me last weekend that was definitely blog material. I want to know, though how do these things keep happening to me? Honestly. How has my life become the magnet for weirdness and odd events? (Those are her words, not mine! :-) ) I do have to say, though, that last weekend’s event fits nicely into a set of stories I have been saving up. I couldn’t decide whether they fit into the category of stupid people, or just under bad customer service. Maybe a little of both.
Anyway, this happened to me at a local restaurant. The establishment itself is a national chain, so I won’t name the restaurant specifically. But up until I went to dinner that Saturday night with my husband, my daughter and my in-laws, I really liked their food. That night I ordered a Chicken Thai Wrap. Yum-my! Normally. The wrap is huge, so comes cut in half for easier eating. I was about half-way through one half, and took a huge bite. Suddenly, out of nowhere it seems, my mouth was filled with mud. That’s right, mud. Like straight off the ground after it’s been raining, mud. Only at first, I didn’t know that’s what it was. All I knew is that I had a mouthful of something that was very gritty and tasted like…well…dirt. If you’ve ever had dirt of any kind in your mouth before, you know that the little, teensy, tiny pieces of rock, (which is what dirt is, eroded rock) spread through your mouth with the smallest of movements, and then stick in the crevices of your teeth. And that it takes an enormous amount of liquid to remove those teensy, tiny pieces of rock from your teeth. For me it took an entire glass and a half of iced tea. And later that night I was still getting stray grit sneaking its way around my molars.
So how did this happen, you ask? Well, when I started investigating what the heck I had in my mouth, my stomach was none too happy when I found a small clump of mud on a couple of pieces of shredded cabbage. What turned my stomach was finding out that little clump was only what was left of the mud, and that I had just eaten the rest of it! It appeared that somehow a large amount of dirt had gotten in between the leaves of the head of cabbage. When they washed the cabbage, instead of the water washing out the dirt it simply turned it into mud, which stuck to the cabbage even through its shredding, and managed to make it into my wrap. MY wrap. Again, how does this stuff happen to me? When I reported it to the waiter, he was very apologetic and took the plate away, since at that point, even though I’d dug through the rest of the wrap and didn’t find anything, I just couldn’t bring myself to eat it. The manager also made a visit to the table, and apologized profusely, saying he’d taken the meal off of our bill. They offered to bring me something else, but with the appetizer we’d had, and the basket of breads I’d wolfed my way through, I really didn’t know how I was going to eat the entire wrap in the first place. So I declined and just finished up the bread. It didn’t occur to me until later to be upset that they did nothing else but remove a meal I didn’t eat in the first place from the check. I think they should have offered me something else. I mean c’mon. Don’t you think a mouth full of mud deserves at least a free dessert? Apparently they didn’t think so. To me this is just bad customer service.
And the more I think about it, the unhappier I am. Of course, the more I think about it, the more I realize that the other instances I have to share definitely fit better in the category of bad customer service, though the stupidity is there, too. Recently I was looking for a specific character cake pan. I had no other supplies that I needed to buy, so I chose to call around to the stores that carried these items rather than driving to each one just to find out they don’t carry the ONE I was after. In the course of my calls, I phoned my favorite craft store. A woman answered the phone “how may I help you?” Silly me thought that meant she was actually going to help me.
I said, “I was wondering if you could tell me if you have Wilton’s Princess Castle cake pan in stock.”
Her reply blew me away. She said, “I suppose I could if I looked.” And then she just sat there. Now, in normal circumstances I might take that as smart-ass sarcasm and think the person was just kidding. But in this case there was no hint of a joking tone in her voice, and the fact that she made no attempt to put me on hold to look for the pan kind of tipped me off that she was really serious when she said that. I tried very hard to give her the benefit of the doubt and consider that she may be an extreme black-and-white thinker. Meaning, I asked if she could tell me if they had the pan. I did not ask her “do you have the pan in stock?” or something similar. In the end, though, I don’t buy it. If someone is that extreme a black-and-white thinker that they cannot occassionally see the grey, they should not be in a position to provide “customer service”.
After sitting there in silence for a full 30 seconds, unsure of whether she was waiting for me to say something, I finally got irritated enough to say, “Ok. Look.” She asked me to hold on, and eventually reported that they did have the pan. Now here’s the part that irritates me the most: I’ve been in that store, and I’ve seen where they answer the phone. It’s at the customer service desk at the front of the store. Right across the aisle from where the cake pans are displayed. In order to “look” all she would have had to do is turn her head and, literally, look. Again, just bad customer service.
And it continues. Recently I was in a local fabric store (again a national chain, so no names) looking for a specific type of fabric for my mom. I even had the SKU number of the fabric. I asked the woman at the counter to look up the number to make sure they had the fabric before I had to go pawing through the racks of bolts of fabric. She informed me that they had 8 yards of it. So I asked her where I might find the fabric, in hopes that I didn’t have to search each and every section in the store. She, unfortunately, was new and wasn’t sure, but asked the woman training her if she could give me some direction. Her response: “I’d look in the regular priced items.” Noooo, really? Hmm, well that only limits it to THREE QUARTERS of the store. I stood there and stared at her for a minute like she had mush for brains. Then, without even responding, turned around and walked away. I managed to cut down the time I spent searching by calling my mom and asking her in what section of the store she had seen the fabric, but I was pretty miffed that I even had to do that. Bad, bad customer service.
It doesn’t stop there. In recent months my husband, daughter and I went out to breakfast with my friend who was in town visiting. Again, national chain involved. Sweetpea, like me, is a tea drinker. When it came time to order our drinks, I ordered hot tea, and she asked for “cold tea”. It didn’t occur to me that I should specify to the waiter that this means iced tea. When he returned with our drinks, he had the whole set up for hot tea for me (i.e. cup, saucer, tea bag, lemon, honey and tiny thermal pot filled with hot water.) He also had the same set up for Sweetpea, only the thermal pot had cold water in it. That’s right. He literally interpreted cold tea to mean the same as hot tea, but with cold water. Needless to say I wasn’t able to brew the tea (yes, I tried, in an attempt not to make the waiter feel stupid). When it didn’t work, I broke down and asked him to bring her some iced tea. Again, not sure on this one whether the guy was one of those black-and-white thinkers or just plain mentally challenged.
Along the same lines, my mom had a recent experience at a fast food restaurant. She placed an order for hot tea. The teenager behind the counter looked at her with a blank look. She repeated her order for hot tea. He finally asked her if that meant she wanted iced tea without the ice. She had to explain to him to just put some hot water in a cup and she would do the rest. Luckily he understood that that meant he should use the same cup they serve coffee in, because she had failed to explain that to him. After receiving the cup of hot water (the tea bags are now located in many of these chains at the condiment bar) she asked for a creamer. He again looked at her with a blank stare. Giving a helpless sigh, she asked him for the little white containers of milk that people put in their coffee. That he understood. As he left the counter to get her the creamer, the man standing next to her made a comment about the customer service there. My mom, being the soft-hearted sort of soul that she is, whispered back that she thought he was probably already doing the best he could. How sad is that?
Now this next instance I'm convinced is a situation of extreme black-and-white thinking. A little over a year ago my husband and I went out to a new restaurant for our anniversary. The meals we ordered there included salad with some kind of crumbled cheese on top, Feta, I believe. When the salads arrived, they were covered in crumbled blue cheese. My husband and I both hate blue cheese. When the waiter came back we verified that it was not supposed to have blue cheese on it. He then asked if we would like him to take the salads away. My husband responded that we did. So then we sat and waited. And waited. And waited some more. No new salads. Finally my husband began to get upset and wondered if we were going to get replacement salads. I told him to be calm, and give the guy the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he was just a black-and-white thinker. When he asked what I meant, I told him "well honey, you told him you wanted him to take the salads away. You never said anything about bringing new ones back." (Having grown up with a sister who is a black and white thinker, I am fluent in black-and-white.) He informed me that that was just silly, and it was just common sense that the waiter should replace the salads. I gently reminded him that common sense is not so common.
About that time the waiter came by bringing condiments and untensils for our main courses. My husband asked him if we were going to get replacement salads. The waiter responded "Oh, did you want new salads?" I wisely kept my mouth shut, and swallowed the I-told-you-so bubbling to my lips.
In reviewing my blog notes, I find that I have two, very long, whoppers of tales having to do with customer service. I think I will save those for a later post, and instead leave you with what I consider the end all, be all of bad customer service. On a recent trip to visit, my sister and her family were rear-ended. (Big surprise there, had to happen sooner or later.) No one was injured, but my sister called 9-1-1 to request police assistance. She was a bit surprised (mildly put) to find that instead of a 9-1-1 operator, she was greeted with a recording that said “You have reached 9-1-1 emergency assistance. All of our operators are currently assisting other callers. Your call is very important to us, and we will be with you shortly. Please do not hang up and call back, as your call will be placed at the end of the que.” Seriously? She just got put on hold for 9-1-1. She said it was at least five whole minutes before anyone picked up, and made the comment that she was glad no one’s life was hanging by a thread where three of those minutes could have meant life or death. I agree with her. Talk about bad customer service!
Anyway, this happened to me at a local restaurant. The establishment itself is a national chain, so I won’t name the restaurant specifically. But up until I went to dinner that Saturday night with my husband, my daughter and my in-laws, I really liked their food. That night I ordered a Chicken Thai Wrap. Yum-my! Normally. The wrap is huge, so comes cut in half for easier eating. I was about half-way through one half, and took a huge bite. Suddenly, out of nowhere it seems, my mouth was filled with mud. That’s right, mud. Like straight off the ground after it’s been raining, mud. Only at first, I didn’t know that’s what it was. All I knew is that I had a mouthful of something that was very gritty and tasted like…well…dirt. If you’ve ever had dirt of any kind in your mouth before, you know that the little, teensy, tiny pieces of rock, (which is what dirt is, eroded rock) spread through your mouth with the smallest of movements, and then stick in the crevices of your teeth. And that it takes an enormous amount of liquid to remove those teensy, tiny pieces of rock from your teeth. For me it took an entire glass and a half of iced tea. And later that night I was still getting stray grit sneaking its way around my molars.
So how did this happen, you ask? Well, when I started investigating what the heck I had in my mouth, my stomach was none too happy when I found a small clump of mud on a couple of pieces of shredded cabbage. What turned my stomach was finding out that little clump was only what was left of the mud, and that I had just eaten the rest of it! It appeared that somehow a large amount of dirt had gotten in between the leaves of the head of cabbage. When they washed the cabbage, instead of the water washing out the dirt it simply turned it into mud, which stuck to the cabbage even through its shredding, and managed to make it into my wrap. MY wrap. Again, how does this stuff happen to me? When I reported it to the waiter, he was very apologetic and took the plate away, since at that point, even though I’d dug through the rest of the wrap and didn’t find anything, I just couldn’t bring myself to eat it. The manager also made a visit to the table, and apologized profusely, saying he’d taken the meal off of our bill. They offered to bring me something else, but with the appetizer we’d had, and the basket of breads I’d wolfed my way through, I really didn’t know how I was going to eat the entire wrap in the first place. So I declined and just finished up the bread. It didn’t occur to me until later to be upset that they did nothing else but remove a meal I didn’t eat in the first place from the check. I think they should have offered me something else. I mean c’mon. Don’t you think a mouth full of mud deserves at least a free dessert? Apparently they didn’t think so. To me this is just bad customer service.
And the more I think about it, the unhappier I am. Of course, the more I think about it, the more I realize that the other instances I have to share definitely fit better in the category of bad customer service, though the stupidity is there, too. Recently I was looking for a specific character cake pan. I had no other supplies that I needed to buy, so I chose to call around to the stores that carried these items rather than driving to each one just to find out they don’t carry the ONE I was after. In the course of my calls, I phoned my favorite craft store. A woman answered the phone “how may I help you?” Silly me thought that meant she was actually going to help me.
I said, “I was wondering if you could tell me if you have Wilton’s Princess Castle cake pan in stock.”
Her reply blew me away. She said, “I suppose I could if I looked.” And then she just sat there. Now, in normal circumstances I might take that as smart-ass sarcasm and think the person was just kidding. But in this case there was no hint of a joking tone in her voice, and the fact that she made no attempt to put me on hold to look for the pan kind of tipped me off that she was really serious when she said that. I tried very hard to give her the benefit of the doubt and consider that she may be an extreme black-and-white thinker. Meaning, I asked if she could tell me if they had the pan. I did not ask her “do you have the pan in stock?” or something similar. In the end, though, I don’t buy it. If someone is that extreme a black-and-white thinker that they cannot occassionally see the grey, they should not be in a position to provide “customer service”.
After sitting there in silence for a full 30 seconds, unsure of whether she was waiting for me to say something, I finally got irritated enough to say, “Ok. Look.” She asked me to hold on, and eventually reported that they did have the pan. Now here’s the part that irritates me the most: I’ve been in that store, and I’ve seen where they answer the phone. It’s at the customer service desk at the front of the store. Right across the aisle from where the cake pans are displayed. In order to “look” all she would have had to do is turn her head and, literally, look. Again, just bad customer service.
And it continues. Recently I was in a local fabric store (again a national chain, so no names) looking for a specific type of fabric for my mom. I even had the SKU number of the fabric. I asked the woman at the counter to look up the number to make sure they had the fabric before I had to go pawing through the racks of bolts of fabric. She informed me that they had 8 yards of it. So I asked her where I might find the fabric, in hopes that I didn’t have to search each and every section in the store. She, unfortunately, was new and wasn’t sure, but asked the woman training her if she could give me some direction. Her response: “I’d look in the regular priced items.” Noooo, really? Hmm, well that only limits it to THREE QUARTERS of the store. I stood there and stared at her for a minute like she had mush for brains. Then, without even responding, turned around and walked away. I managed to cut down the time I spent searching by calling my mom and asking her in what section of the store she had seen the fabric, but I was pretty miffed that I even had to do that. Bad, bad customer service.
It doesn’t stop there. In recent months my husband, daughter and I went out to breakfast with my friend who was in town visiting. Again, national chain involved. Sweetpea, like me, is a tea drinker. When it came time to order our drinks, I ordered hot tea, and she asked for “cold tea”. It didn’t occur to me that I should specify to the waiter that this means iced tea. When he returned with our drinks, he had the whole set up for hot tea for me (i.e. cup, saucer, tea bag, lemon, honey and tiny thermal pot filled with hot water.) He also had the same set up for Sweetpea, only the thermal pot had cold water in it. That’s right. He literally interpreted cold tea to mean the same as hot tea, but with cold water. Needless to say I wasn’t able to brew the tea (yes, I tried, in an attempt not to make the waiter feel stupid). When it didn’t work, I broke down and asked him to bring her some iced tea. Again, not sure on this one whether the guy was one of those black-and-white thinkers or just plain mentally challenged.
Along the same lines, my mom had a recent experience at a fast food restaurant. She placed an order for hot tea. The teenager behind the counter looked at her with a blank look. She repeated her order for hot tea. He finally asked her if that meant she wanted iced tea without the ice. She had to explain to him to just put some hot water in a cup and she would do the rest. Luckily he understood that that meant he should use the same cup they serve coffee in, because she had failed to explain that to him. After receiving the cup of hot water (the tea bags are now located in many of these chains at the condiment bar) she asked for a creamer. He again looked at her with a blank stare. Giving a helpless sigh, she asked him for the little white containers of milk that people put in their coffee. That he understood. As he left the counter to get her the creamer, the man standing next to her made a comment about the customer service there. My mom, being the soft-hearted sort of soul that she is, whispered back that she thought he was probably already doing the best he could. How sad is that?
Now this next instance I'm convinced is a situation of extreme black-and-white thinking. A little over a year ago my husband and I went out to a new restaurant for our anniversary. The meals we ordered there included salad with some kind of crumbled cheese on top, Feta, I believe. When the salads arrived, they were covered in crumbled blue cheese. My husband and I both hate blue cheese. When the waiter came back we verified that it was not supposed to have blue cheese on it. He then asked if we would like him to take the salads away. My husband responded that we did. So then we sat and waited. And waited. And waited some more. No new salads. Finally my husband began to get upset and wondered if we were going to get replacement salads. I told him to be calm, and give the guy the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he was just a black-and-white thinker. When he asked what I meant, I told him "well honey, you told him you wanted him to take the salads away. You never said anything about bringing new ones back." (Having grown up with a sister who is a black and white thinker, I am fluent in black-and-white.) He informed me that that was just silly, and it was just common sense that the waiter should replace the salads. I gently reminded him that common sense is not so common.
About that time the waiter came by bringing condiments and untensils for our main courses. My husband asked him if we were going to get replacement salads. The waiter responded "Oh, did you want new salads?" I wisely kept my mouth shut, and swallowed the I-told-you-so bubbling to my lips.
In reviewing my blog notes, I find that I have two, very long, whoppers of tales having to do with customer service. I think I will save those for a later post, and instead leave you with what I consider the end all, be all of bad customer service. On a recent trip to visit, my sister and her family were rear-ended. (Big surprise there, had to happen sooner or later.) No one was injured, but my sister called 9-1-1 to request police assistance. She was a bit surprised (mildly put) to find that instead of a 9-1-1 operator, she was greeted with a recording that said “You have reached 9-1-1 emergency assistance. All of our operators are currently assisting other callers. Your call is very important to us, and we will be with you shortly. Please do not hang up and call back, as your call will be placed at the end of the que.” Seriously? She just got put on hold for 9-1-1. She said it was at least five whole minutes before anyone picked up, and made the comment that she was glad no one’s life was hanging by a thread where three of those minutes could have meant life or death. I agree with her. Talk about bad customer service!
Friday, June 20, 2008
The Garden Cake
Here’s a little update on the subscription to my blog situation: as I mentioned earlier, Blogarithm sold out to another company, I believe called RssFwd. As of May 20, 2008, all email notifications from Blogarithm will have stopped. You may or may not have begun receiving notices from RssFwd. But, if you’re anything like me, you probably didn’t realize that’s what you are receiving. I finally figured it out when I received several messages in my Spam email box entitled “RssFwd Daily Digest”. I didn’t pay attention to it at first, not really aware that it was something that shouldn’t be in my Spam box. But after several days of receiving these messages, I decided I should actually open one and read it. Lo and behold, it was an update on the blog I subscribe to. Gee, would have been nice to have some sort of warning about that. So me being the irritable picky type that I am, I decided I didn’t like the service that RssFwd HASN’T given. So I unsubscribed from them, and did a new subscription through Feedburner. I also followed my fellow blogger’s lead and added Feedburner as the servicer for subscriptions to my blog. (Don’t worry, if you are subscribed through Blogarithm, a.k.a. RssFwd, you should still receive email notifications, and now you know where to find them!) I have not, however, been impressed with Feedburner either, since the one blog I have subscribed to has been updated several times in the last three days, and I have yet to receive an email message from Feedburner. I’m also not impressed with their tracking capabilities on my blog, but I won’t go too into that. So, since I am being too lazy have no time to search out a new servicer that will meet my high maintenance minimal needs, for the time being I will leave Feedburner on my blog as a servicer for subscriptions, and will look into adding RssFwd soon as well. That way, all of you will have a choice as to who you go with, should you choose to continue/add your subscriptions to my blog. Although, knowing my track record with posting recently, I wouldn’t blame you if you had baled!
Ok, enough with the boring stuff. On to something interesting. I finished a cake last weekend for my sister-in-law’s birthday. Actually, I think it was supposed to be a birthday/Father’s Day cake, since we celebrated both at the same time, but I really think the cake ended up being more for her birthday. I’m calling it The Garden Cake, and, hold on to your shorts, I’m actually pretty pleased with the final result. Please don’t misread that. I’m pleased, not satisfied. I still can see many things I would have done differently, and can still see the mistakes, but overall I think this cake is edging on the best I’ve done. Or, maybe a better way to put it, this cake turned out to be closer to the image I had in my head than any other I’ve done. That’s probably more accurate. And, the good news, I shed not one tear over this cake. Here are some pics:
Ok, enough with the boring stuff. On to something interesting. I finished a cake last weekend for my sister-in-law’s birthday. Actually, I think it was supposed to be a birthday/Father’s Day cake, since we celebrated both at the same time, but I really think the cake ended up being more for her birthday. I’m calling it The Garden Cake, and, hold on to your shorts, I’m actually pretty pleased with the final result. Please don’t misread that. I’m pleased, not satisfied. I still can see many things I would have done differently, and can still see the mistakes, but overall I think this cake is edging on the best I’ve done. Or, maybe a better way to put it, this cake turned out to be closer to the image I had in my head than any other I’ve done. That’s probably more accurate. And, the good news, I shed not one tear over this cake. Here are some pics:
Sorry so many, but I wanted to get all angles since each corner figure was different. Before I get too into the description, here, I should say thank you to my sister, who is the one that put the idea of a garden cake, and of using Color Flow, into my head. Thanks! *muwah!*
The cake was a White Almond Sour Cream cake (thank you to A Garden of Cakes for directing me to this recipe on Cakecentral.com – also one of my favorite sites.) It was filled with a raspberry filling, a recipe I also obtained from Cakecentral, which was FABULOUS because it did not bleed into the cake even without thin layers of buttercream frosting separating it from the cake. Both recipes were experiments, and while I was very pleased with the filling, the cake seemed to turn out as a very heavy, dense cake. The taste was very good, and so I plan on trying it again just to make sure that that’s really how it was supposed to have turned out. If so, it’s not a recipe I would recommend if you’re doing a stacked cake higher than two layers, or probably larger than what I did, as its own weight may actually end up destroying the cake.
The bottom of this cake is an 8 inch square, and the top a 6 inch round. It is covered with fondant, and the grass is raspberry buttercream, which I made with raspberry extract. A little expensive, but a better flavor than ordinary buttercream, I thought. The flowers are all fondant, cut with cookie/fondant cutters. I used Food Writers to add details to the flowers around the outside of the top layer. The bugs/animals figures, as well as the picket fence, were made with Color Flow icing, which is really just royal icing with Color Flow mix added in to make it dry harder. This is only my second cake that has included Color Flow pieces, the first of which was done for class. I had forgotten how time consuming, i.e. frustrating, it could be, but I learned a lot for “next time”.
I would also point out that there are several of the pictures in which the picket fence looks like it is falling off of the cake. That was not the case, it was just simply the angle the pictures were taken from, and the uneven contours of the fondant covering the cake. The bird, butterfly and dragonfly were on thin floral wire (I can’t remember the gauge) “glued” on there with melted candy, allowed to harden in the fridge. My sil and everyone at the party was impressed with the cake, and my…step-nieces(?) asked if we actually had to cut it. I told them for all the work I had to put into it, HELL YES they had to cut it!! And so, once again keeping with tradition, here are the things The Garden Cake taught me:
1. Color Flow outlines are extremely time-consuming. Prepare yourself for several very late nights in row when working with this stuff.
2. Pre-made parchment triangles are a very good investment, if not a necessity.
3. When the directions say to fill the parchment bag no more than half full, they really mean NO MORE THAN half full.
4. Over-filled parchment bags will result in Color Flow-covered hands, and a trail of Color Flow drips from the kitchen to the work area.
5. When the directions say to allow a minimum of 48 hours drying time for Color Flow pieces, it really means a MINIMUM of 48 hours.
5a. Color Flow that has not dried for 48 hours breaks instantly and irreparably upon any attempt to remove it from the waxed paper, with no hope of “gluing” the pieces back together.
6. Melted candy works well for “gluing” clean Color Flow breaks back together.
7. Melted candy, after having hardened again, does not stay hardened in direct sunlight. Re-hardening may be necessary.
8. Fondant, on a cake, and stored in a refrigerator over night, will “sweat” upon being removed from the refrigerator.
8a. Food Writers do not write on “sweating” fondant. They do, however, write extremely well on hardened Color Flow pieces.
9. When “gluing” Color Flow pieces to a fondant-covered cake, it is best to use royal icing, as buttercream dries out and pieces begin to fall off of the cake.
10. When Color Flow pieces hit the ground, they shatter. Instantly. Into millions of tiny shards.
Friday, May 30, 2008
And Then There Was Cake
I guess now it’s time for me to play catch up with cakes. I realized this morning that there have been three cakes I have not posted pictures of. The first was for Sweetpea’s birthday in February. She chose Backyardigans for her parties this year, and her cake was Pablo. (Yes, I did say partIES. As in more than one. She’s probably the only 4-year-old I know that gets a minimum of two birthday parties every year. This year there were two big parties, and two mini parties. Spoiled brat.) Here’s a pic:
This one was the one I did for her party here, though the cake for the party in Wyoming was exactly the same except thicker (two cakes stacked to accommodate more people in attendance.) Being just a character cake, I didn’t really learn a whole lot from this one. Except maybe the re-learned fact that I hate blue icing. HATE blue icing. Although I did find it quite amusing to see a room full of adults with blue lips, teeth and tongues.
The next cake I have not previously posted was for my nephew’s party in March. The one I missed when I was deathly ill (See: Doctor Obvious). His party was fire truck themed, and I truly was sorry I missed it, it sounded so cute! Here’s a pic of that one:
Huh. How about that. I don't remember putting an exclaimation point at the end. Ahem. As I stated earlier, this is not the first time I have decorated that particular cake, so I didn’t really learn much. I think the only info I took away was that “birthday” definitely has an “h” in the spelling, and that pearl dust works relatively well on whipped icing, but not as well as on fondant. Oh, and that cake sparkles have about the consistency of shredded cellophane, with twice the static cling.
The last cake will require some explanation. May 1st was my boss’s 10th anniversary as a Chapter 13 Trustee. This is especially significant because it seems there has never been a Chapter 13 Trustee in Utah that long. I’m thinking the previous record was like 7 years or something. So, since this was an extra special occasion, I decided a cake would be appropriate. The trouble was, I couldn’t think of any way to decorate it that fit. A plain anniversary cake did not seem appropriate, nor did an office-themed cake, or even a straight up law-themed cake. I was stuck. So I sent out emails to everyone in my address book that knew my boss, was involved with bankruptcy or the law, decorated cakes, or was just plain creative. I asked for any and all ideas anyone may have had for this sort of cake. I must admit, some of the ideas were pretty fantastic, though a few I could have not have used without getting fired. (I have some pretty interesting friends…) As it turned out, the cake ended up being a combination of ideas from at least three friends, plus the added cohorting of three co-workers. The result of a collaboration of minds. I will not mention any names, and will explain why in just moment. They know who they are, anyway. And to all of you who contributed, thank you so much for your suggestions and your help!
So the cake itself will require a little explanation. Here are a couple pics:
It is actually two separate cakes, meant to represent the number 10, for 10 years. It was then suggested that I turn the zero into a pie graph. Actually I kind of have that backwards. I elected to go with the pie graph first, and then someone suggested I add the one to make it a ten. The graph is meant to be my boss’s time at work “distributed on a pro rata basis”. Most who aren’t involved in bankruptcy won’t get that, so, without going too far into detail, a short explanation: a Trustee in a Chapter 13 distributes money to creditors, those people owed by the debtor filing bankruptcy. These days, most creditors get paid on a pro rata basis, meaning there is a pool of money and each creditor gets some of that money based on what portion of the overall debt is owed to them. (e.g. if the total owed is $20,000, and one creditor is owed $10,000, then that creditor will receive 50% of the available funds.) So, in our business, “distributed on a pro rata basis” is equivalent to a household term.
Of course I could not be serious with this cake, so the sections of the pie graph are meant to be humorous or facetious. I think the pictures came out pretty well, but if not, here’s a breakdown:
55.5% - Putting out…fires
10% - Running interference for the…
10% - Jumping through…hoops
8% - Potlucks and Ice Cream
6% - CLE – finding rotten Easter Eggs
6% - Judging Employees’ apparel and appearance
4% - Creating Powerpoints for debtors’ entertainment
.5% - Court appearances
You’ll notice that I have not filled in exactly what the tags say. The reason is because I don’t want a search for those names to pull up my blog. Not that I really think anyone would care, but still. Better safe than sorry. Anyway, I suspect that most people not involved in bankruptcy here in Utah will not get these jokes. But you at least have to laugh at the Ice Cream and the Court appearances. I did.
Before any of you ask, yes, the pie graph is accurately divided. Each section does represent its assigned percentage. I’m apparently not capable of doing it any other way. I actually drew up the graph on Excel and printed it off and took it to Kinko’s. I had them enlarge it so that the graph was exactly the same size as the cake (12 inches in diameter), then had them make 8 copies. I cut out of each copy one piece of the pie. Then I used each copy to cover the cake, and used spray-on icing color to spray in the missing piece. I outlined the sections with decorator’s gel, and Sweetpea insisted that I add sprinkles to the pie graph cake, since I was using them already for the one cake. I typed up the flags with the section percentages and explanations on them using Word and printed that off. Took me one sheet of paper. I them “laminated” the flags with packing tape, and also taped them to bamboo skewers cut in half. I can’t tell you what a wonderful idea this was (thank you to my coworker for that!) as it saved me from having to pipe all of that information onto the cake, or to make flags out of fondant and hand-write it all with Food Writers. Thank you, thank you! All in all it was not really a difficult cake, just took a lot of planning. I broke up the work over a few days, so I only ended up staying awake until 1:00 a.m., instead of my traditional 3:00 a.m.
A few explanations for inside jokes: the largest pie section is based upon all the trouble one particular attorney gives our office. The next largest is due to my boss’s bosses. Their office goes all the way up to D.C., but I think we first answer to the local office. They keep him hopping. On even keel with that is the national organization he’s on officer for. They also keep him hopping. No wonder Court appearances are so low! The overall result is that he very much liked the cake, and laughed out loud at it all. He kept the little signs, and I sent him the pictures of it that I took. So, in keeping with tradition, here are the things I learned with this cake:
1. Kinko’s charges a lot more for enlargements if you have anything bigger than 8 ½ x 11.
2. Spray-on icing color runs on white chocolate buttercream frosting.
3. It is possible to get a bad can of spray-on icing color. It is helpful to test all cans purchased at a time when a visit to the store of purchase to return bad cans will actually still be possible prior to the time delivery of the cake is due. (i.e. test the cans while the store is still open, and not the night before)
4. Sometimes even inside jokes are not so inside.
5. Spray-on icing color will turn the inside of your nose blue. Or green. Or red. Or brown, if you’re using multiple colors.
6. Triple chocolate fudge cake, filled with milk chocolate ganache, and covered with white chocolate buttercream frosting can create a love-hate relationship between the cake maker and a large group of female co-workers. (Hey, it’s fat-free, right?)
7. Sweetpea is as OCD as her mother when it comes to making things match.
8. Ebay is a fantastic source for retired cake pans, especially when they’re needed in a BIG hurry.
9. It is better to experiment with expensive ideas/ingredients when someone else is paying for them.
10. Even men can be flattered and impressed with something special done solely for them.
This one was the one I did for her party here, though the cake for the party in Wyoming was exactly the same except thicker (two cakes stacked to accommodate more people in attendance.) Being just a character cake, I didn’t really learn a whole lot from this one. Except maybe the re-learned fact that I hate blue icing. HATE blue icing. Although I did find it quite amusing to see a room full of adults with blue lips, teeth and tongues.
The next cake I have not previously posted was for my nephew’s party in March. The one I missed when I was deathly ill (See: Doctor Obvious). His party was fire truck themed, and I truly was sorry I missed it, it sounded so cute! Here’s a pic of that one:
Huh. How about that. I don't remember putting an exclaimation point at the end. Ahem. As I stated earlier, this is not the first time I have decorated that particular cake, so I didn’t really learn much. I think the only info I took away was that “birthday” definitely has an “h” in the spelling, and that pearl dust works relatively well on whipped icing, but not as well as on fondant. Oh, and that cake sparkles have about the consistency of shredded cellophane, with twice the static cling.
The last cake will require some explanation. May 1st was my boss’s 10th anniversary as a Chapter 13 Trustee. This is especially significant because it seems there has never been a Chapter 13 Trustee in Utah that long. I’m thinking the previous record was like 7 years or something. So, since this was an extra special occasion, I decided a cake would be appropriate. The trouble was, I couldn’t think of any way to decorate it that fit. A plain anniversary cake did not seem appropriate, nor did an office-themed cake, or even a straight up law-themed cake. I was stuck. So I sent out emails to everyone in my address book that knew my boss, was involved with bankruptcy or the law, decorated cakes, or was just plain creative. I asked for any and all ideas anyone may have had for this sort of cake. I must admit, some of the ideas were pretty fantastic, though a few I could have not have used without getting fired. (I have some pretty interesting friends…) As it turned out, the cake ended up being a combination of ideas from at least three friends, plus the added cohorting of three co-workers. The result of a collaboration of minds. I will not mention any names, and will explain why in just moment. They know who they are, anyway. And to all of you who contributed, thank you so much for your suggestions and your help!
So the cake itself will require a little explanation. Here are a couple pics:
It is actually two separate cakes, meant to represent the number 10, for 10 years. It was then suggested that I turn the zero into a pie graph. Actually I kind of have that backwards. I elected to go with the pie graph first, and then someone suggested I add the one to make it a ten. The graph is meant to be my boss’s time at work “distributed on a pro rata basis”. Most who aren’t involved in bankruptcy won’t get that, so, without going too far into detail, a short explanation: a Trustee in a Chapter 13 distributes money to creditors, those people owed by the debtor filing bankruptcy. These days, most creditors get paid on a pro rata basis, meaning there is a pool of money and each creditor gets some of that money based on what portion of the overall debt is owed to them. (e.g. if the total owed is $20,000, and one creditor is owed $10,000, then that creditor will receive 50% of the available funds.) So, in our business, “distributed on a pro rata basis” is equivalent to a household term.
Of course I could not be serious with this cake, so the sections of the pie graph are meant to be humorous or facetious. I think the pictures came out pretty well, but if not, here’s a breakdown:
55.5% - Putting out…fires
10% - Running interference for the…
10% - Jumping through…hoops
8% - Potlucks and Ice Cream
6% - CLE – finding rotten Easter Eggs
6% - Judging Employees’ apparel and appearance
4% - Creating Powerpoints for debtors’ entertainment
.5% - Court appearances
You’ll notice that I have not filled in exactly what the tags say. The reason is because I don’t want a search for those names to pull up my blog. Not that I really think anyone would care, but still. Better safe than sorry. Anyway, I suspect that most people not involved in bankruptcy here in Utah will not get these jokes. But you at least have to laugh at the Ice Cream and the Court appearances. I did.
Before any of you ask, yes, the pie graph is accurately divided. Each section does represent its assigned percentage. I’m apparently not capable of doing it any other way. I actually drew up the graph on Excel and printed it off and took it to Kinko’s. I had them enlarge it so that the graph was exactly the same size as the cake (12 inches in diameter), then had them make 8 copies. I cut out of each copy one piece of the pie. Then I used each copy to cover the cake, and used spray-on icing color to spray in the missing piece. I outlined the sections with decorator’s gel, and Sweetpea insisted that I add sprinkles to the pie graph cake, since I was using them already for the one cake. I typed up the flags with the section percentages and explanations on them using Word and printed that off. Took me one sheet of paper. I them “laminated” the flags with packing tape, and also taped them to bamboo skewers cut in half. I can’t tell you what a wonderful idea this was (thank you to my coworker for that!) as it saved me from having to pipe all of that information onto the cake, or to make flags out of fondant and hand-write it all with Food Writers. Thank you, thank you! All in all it was not really a difficult cake, just took a lot of planning. I broke up the work over a few days, so I only ended up staying awake until 1:00 a.m., instead of my traditional 3:00 a.m.
A few explanations for inside jokes: the largest pie section is based upon all the trouble one particular attorney gives our office. The next largest is due to my boss’s bosses. Their office goes all the way up to D.C., but I think we first answer to the local office. They keep him hopping. On even keel with that is the national organization he’s on officer for. They also keep him hopping. No wonder Court appearances are so low! The overall result is that he very much liked the cake, and laughed out loud at it all. He kept the little signs, and I sent him the pictures of it that I took. So, in keeping with tradition, here are the things I learned with this cake:
1. Kinko’s charges a lot more for enlargements if you have anything bigger than 8 ½ x 11.
2. Spray-on icing color runs on white chocolate buttercream frosting.
3. It is possible to get a bad can of spray-on icing color. It is helpful to test all cans purchased at a time when a visit to the store of purchase to return bad cans will actually still be possible prior to the time delivery of the cake is due. (i.e. test the cans while the store is still open, and not the night before)
4. Sometimes even inside jokes are not so inside.
5. Spray-on icing color will turn the inside of your nose blue. Or green. Or red. Or brown, if you’re using multiple colors.
6. Triple chocolate fudge cake, filled with milk chocolate ganache, and covered with white chocolate buttercream frosting can create a love-hate relationship between the cake maker and a large group of female co-workers. (Hey, it’s fat-free, right?)
7. Sweetpea is as OCD as her mother when it comes to making things match.
8. Ebay is a fantastic source for retired cake pans, especially when they’re needed in a BIG hurry.
9. It is better to experiment with expensive ideas/ingredients when someone else is paying for them.
10. Even men can be flattered and impressed with something special done solely for them.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Just Business
Wait, wait. That can’t possibly be right. Last posted on May 1st? Twenty-six days ago? I don’t think so. I can’t imagine how 26 days could have gone by since my last post…
On second thought, yes I can. Of course, between family fights, meltdowns, emergencies, surgeries, hospitals, full Court calendars and ridiculously busy work weeks…yes, I guess I can see exactly how I haven’t posted in 26 days. So, for my loyal readers out there, I apologize for the delay, and thank you for sticking around. It appears life in general just got in the way of my life. How rude. I hate it when that happens.
So, a few housekeeping matters. Thanks to the linking of my blog with two more blogs, I seem to have acquired some new readers. Welcome, and thank you for helping me keep my average of 5 hits per day. It’s a little odd to know that there are people out there whom I have never met reading what happens in my life – and enjoying it! But I am flattered that I can entertain, even at my own expense. If you are not aware, and as a reminder for those returning visitors, I have posted to the right of the text an email notification system called blogarithm.com. If you enter your email address in there, you will receive an automatic email whenever it is that I get around to posting something new on my blog. Just as a warning to all, though, I have been informed that blogarithm is sometimes slow, and you may not get the email until the day after I post. I have also been informed by the blogarithm people that they have sold out to another company and are in the process of updating all of their systems. So far I’m not aware of any changes I’m required to make to my link to their subscription service on my blog due to these changes, but if for some reason you are subscribed and not receiving the reminder emails, please leave me a comment and let me know so that I can figure it all out. All in all I hope not to have to change services, but will certainly let you know if it comes down to that.
Directly under the blogarithm link, I also have a guestbook that can be signed to let me know you have visited. This is kind of nice as well, because I know I have regular readers out there who I have either never met, or have had no idea that they are reading. It’s wonderful to see who has stopped by to check it out. So, if you’re so inclined, please sign my guestbook!
Also, you may have noticed that I have changed the look of my blog. I realized after spending a considerable amount of time re-reading some of my posts that the previous color scheme and backgrounds were a little difficult on the eyes. And not very creative. It just so happened that friend of mine who also blogs had just changed her format as well, and provided this link for free backdrops: http://www.mybackdrops.blogspot.com/. The woman who owns the blog, Holly, is absolutely FABULOUS, and was willing to actually sit and talk poor, computer illiterate me through installing a new backdrop when I got stuck. Pretty good for a complete stranger, huh? If you choose to use any of the backdrops on her blog, I would ask that you follow her requirements for doing so, let her know you found her site through my blog, and that I raved about her and all the help she gave me. She really was very wonderful. Anyway, I found several backdrops that I really liked, but Sweetpea helped me make the final decision. What do you think of her choice? Leave me a comment and let me know, so I can pass on to her the success of her good taste. :-)
You few regular readers may have noticed that my last post (the Mother’s Day post) was not really in sync with the rest of my posts. I wanted to explain that I did that post as an entry into a Mother’s Day contest on http://notesfrommynest.blogspot.com/. I blogged with a friend, and gained three entries (I believe) into each of the drawings available in the contest. The bad part was that the hostess of the contest gave the subject for the post. I found it a hundred times more difficult to write on a subject mandated to me, than on any subject that just came into my head. And really, the post took me twice as long as any other I’ve done, not to mention it came at a time that was probably the WORST week I’ve had in I can’t tell you how long. I’m also not pleased with the quality of the work, but the good news was that the contest was not based upon the content, only the post actually having been done. The rest of the good news is that I won two of the drawings: a gift certificate for an online store called Starlooks Boutique (for kids and babies), and some Daily Home Planner software. I’ve received the gift certificate, but have yet to have enough time to browse and see what I might like to get for Sweetpea (might let her pick her own). I am anxiously awaiting the software, it sounds pretty cool. These wins are especially awesome because I am particularly unlucky when it comes to drawings. I never win any drawing I enter. Ever. Content based contests, maybe, but I think I’ve only won four drawings in my entire life. These count for two, and a third someone entered my name for me, which is probably why I won. Never would have won had I filled out that little slip myself. So all in all a pretty neat deal.
And the last item of business, I am informed that the picture on my Weird Sightings post of the moron driving the car with the mattresses on top is not, in fact, a Toyota. My mistake. Apparently it is a Mazda. Ahem. Well, I certainly wouldn’t want to offend the people of Toyota by saying their car is perfect for morons.
So on Wednesday of last week I informed my boss I would not be in the office on Friday. By the time Thursday was over, I had worked enough to have my 40 hours for the week, and was horribly, terribly exhausted. He politely reminded me that I am an exempt (i.e. salary) employee, and can therefore work more than 40 hours if the work calls for it. I politely reminded him that I had worked two 12 hour days in the last week, and that I am exempt, not indentured. He laughed and told me to enjoy my day off. So, after four days off from work, I go traipsing back into the office this morning, completely unaware that I was not in the least prepared to work.
First, I sat for two hours reading, just reading, all the crap I’d missed while I was gone, both work and personal (though more on the work side.) Somehow, don’t know what it was or why, but I felt as if I’d been away from the place for a year. I was having a really hard time getting back into the swing of things. It took me three times as long to review and endorse the Orders this morning, and twenty minutes to answer one short, two-line email. Anytime anyone would ask me a question, I found myself standing there staring at them for a minimum of 30 seconds. Not staring at them like they were an idiot, but like I’m an idiot and I didn’t have a clue what language they were speaking, let alone what it is they just said to me. In the first three hours of work I had had to ask people four times to repeat the question, and I ran out of lifelines at about 11:30. I'm still not sure what my final answers should be. So goes another truth: it always takes a minimum of a day back at work to recover from your vacation.
On second thought, yes I can. Of course, between family fights, meltdowns, emergencies, surgeries, hospitals, full Court calendars and ridiculously busy work weeks…yes, I guess I can see exactly how I haven’t posted in 26 days. So, for my loyal readers out there, I apologize for the delay, and thank you for sticking around. It appears life in general just got in the way of my life. How rude. I hate it when that happens.
So, a few housekeeping matters. Thanks to the linking of my blog with two more blogs, I seem to have acquired some new readers. Welcome, and thank you for helping me keep my average of 5 hits per day. It’s a little odd to know that there are people out there whom I have never met reading what happens in my life – and enjoying it! But I am flattered that I can entertain, even at my own expense. If you are not aware, and as a reminder for those returning visitors, I have posted to the right of the text an email notification system called blogarithm.com. If you enter your email address in there, you will receive an automatic email whenever it is that I get around to posting something new on my blog. Just as a warning to all, though, I have been informed that blogarithm is sometimes slow, and you may not get the email until the day after I post. I have also been informed by the blogarithm people that they have sold out to another company and are in the process of updating all of their systems. So far I’m not aware of any changes I’m required to make to my link to their subscription service on my blog due to these changes, but if for some reason you are subscribed and not receiving the reminder emails, please leave me a comment and let me know so that I can figure it all out. All in all I hope not to have to change services, but will certainly let you know if it comes down to that.
Directly under the blogarithm link, I also have a guestbook that can be signed to let me know you have visited. This is kind of nice as well, because I know I have regular readers out there who I have either never met, or have had no idea that they are reading. It’s wonderful to see who has stopped by to check it out. So, if you’re so inclined, please sign my guestbook!
Also, you may have noticed that I have changed the look of my blog. I realized after spending a considerable amount of time re-reading some of my posts that the previous color scheme and backgrounds were a little difficult on the eyes. And not very creative. It just so happened that friend of mine who also blogs had just changed her format as well, and provided this link for free backdrops: http://www.mybackdrops.blogspot.com/. The woman who owns the blog, Holly, is absolutely FABULOUS, and was willing to actually sit and talk poor, computer illiterate me through installing a new backdrop when I got stuck. Pretty good for a complete stranger, huh? If you choose to use any of the backdrops on her blog, I would ask that you follow her requirements for doing so, let her know you found her site through my blog, and that I raved about her and all the help she gave me. She really was very wonderful. Anyway, I found several backdrops that I really liked, but Sweetpea helped me make the final decision. What do you think of her choice? Leave me a comment and let me know, so I can pass on to her the success of her good taste. :-)
You few regular readers may have noticed that my last post (the Mother’s Day post) was not really in sync with the rest of my posts. I wanted to explain that I did that post as an entry into a Mother’s Day contest on http://notesfrommynest.blogspot.com/. I blogged with a friend, and gained three entries (I believe) into each of the drawings available in the contest. The bad part was that the hostess of the contest gave the subject for the post. I found it a hundred times more difficult to write on a subject mandated to me, than on any subject that just came into my head. And really, the post took me twice as long as any other I’ve done, not to mention it came at a time that was probably the WORST week I’ve had in I can’t tell you how long. I’m also not pleased with the quality of the work, but the good news was that the contest was not based upon the content, only the post actually having been done. The rest of the good news is that I won two of the drawings: a gift certificate for an online store called Starlooks Boutique (for kids and babies), and some Daily Home Planner software. I’ve received the gift certificate, but have yet to have enough time to browse and see what I might like to get for Sweetpea (might let her pick her own). I am anxiously awaiting the software, it sounds pretty cool. These wins are especially awesome because I am particularly unlucky when it comes to drawings. I never win any drawing I enter. Ever. Content based contests, maybe, but I think I’ve only won four drawings in my entire life. These count for two, and a third someone entered my name for me, which is probably why I won. Never would have won had I filled out that little slip myself. So all in all a pretty neat deal.
And the last item of business, I am informed that the picture on my Weird Sightings post of the moron driving the car with the mattresses on top is not, in fact, a Toyota. My mistake. Apparently it is a Mazda. Ahem. Well, I certainly wouldn’t want to offend the people of Toyota by saying their car is perfect for morons.
So on Wednesday of last week I informed my boss I would not be in the office on Friday. By the time Thursday was over, I had worked enough to have my 40 hours for the week, and was horribly, terribly exhausted. He politely reminded me that I am an exempt (i.e. salary) employee, and can therefore work more than 40 hours if the work calls for it. I politely reminded him that I had worked two 12 hour days in the last week, and that I am exempt, not indentured. He laughed and told me to enjoy my day off. So, after four days off from work, I go traipsing back into the office this morning, completely unaware that I was not in the least prepared to work.
First, I sat for two hours reading, just reading, all the crap I’d missed while I was gone, both work and personal (though more on the work side.) Somehow, don’t know what it was or why, but I felt as if I’d been away from the place for a year. I was having a really hard time getting back into the swing of things. It took me three times as long to review and endorse the Orders this morning, and twenty minutes to answer one short, two-line email. Anytime anyone would ask me a question, I found myself standing there staring at them for a minimum of 30 seconds. Not staring at them like they were an idiot, but like I’m an idiot and I didn’t have a clue what language they were speaking, let alone what it is they just said to me. In the first three hours of work I had had to ask people four times to repeat the question, and I ran out of lifelines at about 11:30. I'm still not sure what my final answers should be. So goes another truth: it always takes a minimum of a day back at work to recover from your vacation.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
What I Know Now
When I was about 8 months pregnant a friend of mind decided to enlighten me about how my life would be once the baby was born. Why he waited until I was that far along in my pregnancy to share this invaluable wisdom, I will never know. But one day, there he was sitting in a chair in my office, with this oh-so-serious look on his face. He started the conversation with a single statement: “Having a child will change every facet of your life”.
My immediate reaction was to respond with “I know”.
This was evidently a mistake, since he acted as if I had said the most uneducated, ignorant statement he had ever heard, and said “NO, you DON’T know.” He followed this up with a repeat of the previous epic statement, painfully drawn out with each word emphasized to the point that he was almost spelling them “Having…a…child…WILL…CHANGE…EVERY…FACET…OF…YOUR…LIFE.” As I sat there staring at him, wondering what brought on this urge to enlighten me, (not to mention wondering briefly if he had completely lost his mind, since he’s been on the verge for a long time), it occurred to me that he was right. Of course, I had thought about this before, hence my spontaneous ‘I know’ response. How could having a baby not change everything? After all, I’d already had to stock my house with at least a year’s worth of diapers in every size available, a whole new teeny wardrobe complete with sizes all the way from Preemie to 3T, a crib, rocking chair, changing table, dresser, baby monitors and even a miniature bathtub, not to mention toys, books, blankets of every kind, strollers, car seats, diaper bags, burp clothes, and a whole myriad of baby bath products. I’m sure the list can go on and on. I’d already visited daycare after daycare (since I am a working mom) and interrogated every teacher and employee I could get my claws into, asking them intimate, personal questions that no one should have to answer unless they are in confession or being tortured. I’d already read ahead in my parenting books (extra credit, you know) and was prepared for many of those childhood maladies you hope your kids will never get but know someday they will All for one tiny little bundle, the arrival of which was already scaring me to death. Of COURSE things will change.
But until he said something that day, and followed it up with an example, I never really thought of the practical applications of an addition to our family. His example was perfectly suited to bring that side of parenthood to light. I just didn’t really realize how accurate it was until I experienced it myself. He told of him and his wife, prior to the birth of their son. Before the little tyke was born, any night of the week he and his wife may have wanted to go out to eat for the evening meal. As he explained it, life was simple. They wanted something to eat from a restaurant, so they got their coats, their keys, got in the car and off they went. Once their son came along, dinner out required a minimum of a week’s worth of planning, which may or may not have resulted in an actual dinner in a restaurant. They could not just decide to go and then go. Instead, they would decide to go, then change the baby’s diaper and probably his clothes, get the diaper bag ready making sure there were plenty of diapers, wipes, diaper rash ointment, toys, 2 sets of spare clothing, bibs, bottles/baby food/snacks (as the baby progressed in age, of course), thermometer, Tylenol and an extra blanket. Then one would go out and start the car (in wintertime) so it could get warm for the baby, while the other proceeded to bundle the baby up until he vaguely resembled a caterpillar’s cocoon with a nose and two little eyes peeping out, then strap him in his car seat, by which time he had soiled his diaper again, requiring an undoing of everything that had been done, and the whole process would start over. Many a night they ended up eating ramen noodles before bed, because they just never made it out to eat.
At the time I just laughed at his story, and although I comprehended somewhere in my psyche that he was 100% correct and that I should pay attention to what he was telling me, I went about life as usual waiting for my own baby to arrive. I realize now, after 4 years of being a mom, I should have taken his words of wisdom a little more seriously. I also realize that he was the only person that attempted to give me a down-to-earth viewpoint of what parenthood is really like. I now wish that someone had told me a lot more about the nitty gritty nuts and bolts of raising a child. Not to mention what it would do to me emotionally. So, in honor of the upcoming Mother’s Day holiday, here are some things I know now that I wish I knew then.
I wish I had known that every report I hear of every death, injury or disappearance of a child I don’t know would be cause for hours of tears, days of reflection, months of fear and years of worry.
I wish I had known that plastic food really does need to be refrigerated.
I wish I had known that my capacity for love went light years beyond what I ever could have imagined.
I wish I had known that grease stains appear in places that no grease has ever been.
I wish I had known that the gentle touch of a child’s hand on my skin could afford more calm, peace, relief and inner peace than any spa or therapy could ever provide.
I wish I had known that sandbox sand is actually a portable toy.
I wish I had known that adjustable waistbands are really the best invention anyone ever conjured.
I wish I had known that “They’re Coming to Take Me Away” by Dr. Demento is actually a children’s song.
I wish I had known that even in my most pathetic or livid states of mind, a look into my child’s eyes could make it all disappear.
I wish I had known that every day is an adventure, if I will only choose to view the world through my child’s eyes.
I’m sure I can go on and on.
My immediate reaction was to respond with “I know”.
This was evidently a mistake, since he acted as if I had said the most uneducated, ignorant statement he had ever heard, and said “NO, you DON’T know.” He followed this up with a repeat of the previous epic statement, painfully drawn out with each word emphasized to the point that he was almost spelling them “Having…a…child…WILL…CHANGE…EVERY…FACET…OF…YOUR…LIFE.” As I sat there staring at him, wondering what brought on this urge to enlighten me, (not to mention wondering briefly if he had completely lost his mind, since he’s been on the verge for a long time), it occurred to me that he was right. Of course, I had thought about this before, hence my spontaneous ‘I know’ response. How could having a baby not change everything? After all, I’d already had to stock my house with at least a year’s worth of diapers in every size available, a whole new teeny wardrobe complete with sizes all the way from Preemie to 3T, a crib, rocking chair, changing table, dresser, baby monitors and even a miniature bathtub, not to mention toys, books, blankets of every kind, strollers, car seats, diaper bags, burp clothes, and a whole myriad of baby bath products. I’m sure the list can go on and on. I’d already visited daycare after daycare (since I am a working mom) and interrogated every teacher and employee I could get my claws into, asking them intimate, personal questions that no one should have to answer unless they are in confession or being tortured. I’d already read ahead in my parenting books (extra credit, you know) and was prepared for many of those childhood maladies you hope your kids will never get but know someday they will All for one tiny little bundle, the arrival of which was already scaring me to death. Of COURSE things will change.
But until he said something that day, and followed it up with an example, I never really thought of the practical applications of an addition to our family. His example was perfectly suited to bring that side of parenthood to light. I just didn’t really realize how accurate it was until I experienced it myself. He told of him and his wife, prior to the birth of their son. Before the little tyke was born, any night of the week he and his wife may have wanted to go out to eat for the evening meal. As he explained it, life was simple. They wanted something to eat from a restaurant, so they got their coats, their keys, got in the car and off they went. Once their son came along, dinner out required a minimum of a week’s worth of planning, which may or may not have resulted in an actual dinner in a restaurant. They could not just decide to go and then go. Instead, they would decide to go, then change the baby’s diaper and probably his clothes, get the diaper bag ready making sure there were plenty of diapers, wipes, diaper rash ointment, toys, 2 sets of spare clothing, bibs, bottles/baby food/snacks (as the baby progressed in age, of course), thermometer, Tylenol and an extra blanket. Then one would go out and start the car (in wintertime) so it could get warm for the baby, while the other proceeded to bundle the baby up until he vaguely resembled a caterpillar’s cocoon with a nose and two little eyes peeping out, then strap him in his car seat, by which time he had soiled his diaper again, requiring an undoing of everything that had been done, and the whole process would start over. Many a night they ended up eating ramen noodles before bed, because they just never made it out to eat.
At the time I just laughed at his story, and although I comprehended somewhere in my psyche that he was 100% correct and that I should pay attention to what he was telling me, I went about life as usual waiting for my own baby to arrive. I realize now, after 4 years of being a mom, I should have taken his words of wisdom a little more seriously. I also realize that he was the only person that attempted to give me a down-to-earth viewpoint of what parenthood is really like. I now wish that someone had told me a lot more about the nitty gritty nuts and bolts of raising a child. Not to mention what it would do to me emotionally. So, in honor of the upcoming Mother’s Day holiday, here are some things I know now that I wish I knew then.
I wish I had known that every report I hear of every death, injury or disappearance of a child I don’t know would be cause for hours of tears, days of reflection, months of fear and years of worry.
I wish I had known that plastic food really does need to be refrigerated.
I wish I had known that my capacity for love went light years beyond what I ever could have imagined.
I wish I had known that grease stains appear in places that no grease has ever been.
I wish I had known that the gentle touch of a child’s hand on my skin could afford more calm, peace, relief and inner peace than any spa or therapy could ever provide.
I wish I had known that sandbox sand is actually a portable toy.
I wish I had known that adjustable waistbands are really the best invention anyone ever conjured.
I wish I had known that “They’re Coming to Take Me Away” by Dr. Demento is actually a children’s song.
I wish I had known that even in my most pathetic or livid states of mind, a look into my child’s eyes could make it all disappear.
I wish I had known that every day is an adventure, if I will only choose to view the world through my child’s eyes.
I’m sure I can go on and on.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Weird Sightings
Lately I’ve seen a lot of strange things around town. At first I thought it probably just had to do with the change of seasons and the coming of spring. But then I realized that I’ve been seeing these types of things for a really long time. No, I’m not delusional, they really do exist. Let me rewind here…
I guess I really need to start about 12 years ago. My husband and I were engaged at that time. Since the wedding was going to take place in my home town and I was living in Utah, I was spending most weekends driving back and forth making arrangements for the big event. By the time spring rolled around, I was pretty tired. These things take a big toll, even when you’re young. So one Friday afternoon I was on my way to Wyoming. The interstate crosses over a small river called the Blacksfork along the way, about 60 miles or so west of my home town. As I crossed the river I glanced down, and though it passed by very quickly, I could have sworn that perched there, on a small island in the middle of the river, in the middle of the Wyoming plains, stood a flamingo. That’s right, the tall, pink, curved-billed, tropical bird that only resides in much warmer climates. By the time I had gotten home, I had convinced myself that I was so tired I was hallucinating. (It has happened before, but that’s a whole different story.) I did tell my mom what I thought I had seen, and after looking at me like I'd lost my mind, she gently reminded me that flamingos don’t live in Wyoming. I told her I knew, but I wasn’t sure I was really THAT tired yet. As it turns out, on her way back from Utah, after a trip down to pick up additional supplies for the wedding, she looked as she crossed the Blacksfork, and sure enough, there was a flamingo on the island. It seems a local resident put a plastic yard flamingo on the island as a practical joke. I expect my reaction is exactly what they intended.
Now we fast-forward a while….
A few months ago my husband, daughter and I were driving along one evening. We passed a building that used to be a corner gas station/convenience store, but is now vacant. Parked under the very tall gas station awning that is over the gas pumps was a semi truck. On top of the semi truck’s trailer was a ladder. On top of the ladder was a man hanging a sign on the side of the awning. There was also a second man standing on top of the trailer, holding the ladder steady. Because, you know, we wouldn’t want that ladder to slip. The man on top could fall and get hurt! My first thought was of those emails that go around with all the pictures of people doing stupid things. One in particular I know of is entitled “Men at Work”, and it seems to me it had several pictures included that this scene could have rivaled. My second thought was “Wonder what OSHA would think of that one.” I have no idea what the sign said.
We continued on our journey up the street, when not two blocks later we encountered this:
I know the picture is not very clear. It was taken in the evening as the sun was setting… from a moving car…through a window…with a cell phone…that has a scratch across the lens. It’s bound to be a bit blurry. So, in case you can’t tell what it is, that is a car (a Toyota for sure, though I don’t know which model) with a set of mattresses strapped to its roof. In addition, the idiot driving had the window rolled down (during the middle of winter, remember) with his arm hanging out and was holding on to the plastic the mattresses were wrapped in with his free hand. As if he could prevent them from falling/sliding off the top of that car just by holding on to them. I’d be more inclined to believe a hefty enough gust of wind would probably dislocate his shoulder before he’d be able to keep those things up there. And now the icing on the cake, (and my favorite part). Though you can’t see it in the picture, the man had on a pair of those black driving gloves with the knuckles cut out of them. Because I’m sure they help him grip the plastic oh so much better. My thought was simply, I’m taking a picture of this one.
A couple of weeks later, as I was driving to work in the morning, I glanced over as I passed a Cadillac doing 25 mph under the speed limit. I nearly snapped my spine doing a double-take. In the driver’s seat of this vehicle was an old lady with a blue beehive hairdo (gotta love that one) who was literally sitting about 4 inches away from the steering wheel. She was sitting so close that she was practically laying across the steering wheel, her arms encircling it as if she had them wrapped around those giant rubber balls you buy out of cages in toy stores. I told my mom about this sighting, and she commented that she didn’t think the car manufacturers should be able to make the seats slide that far forward, for safety reasons. I told her that I didn’t think the seat was slid that far forward. The seat back actually appeared to be leaning forward, like it would if you were moving the seat to allow someone in or out of the back seat of a two-door vehicle. The woman looked almost as if she were trapped between the seat and the steering wheel. My mom also reminded me that shorter people have to sit closer to the pedals. I told her I didn’t think this woman was short, since she was sitting nearly a head taller than the height of the steering wheel. We weren’t dealing with the old lady from Ferris Bueller peeking out from between the steering wheel and the dashboard here! Needless to say, I was pretty happy I was able to pass her without incident.
About a week after that, I managed three strange sightings in one day. Actually, all in one crisp, 48 degree morning. As I was on my way to work, I passed a man on a motorcycle. A green motorcycle. Not just green, we’re talking neon lime green. And it was not just the accents that were green. It was the entire motorcycle. The man, at least, was wearing jeans and a black leather jacket, so for half a second I thought he might be a little bit normal. But then I saw his helmet. On top of the otherwise normal, black motorcycle helmet, there was a mohawk. A green mohawk. A neon lime green mohawk. It was a perfect match. Well, at least he was wearing a helmet.
Once I got to work, I found myself waiting in line to get into the parking garage. Seems an elderly man in the first car had no idea that he had to take a ticket to get the gate to open and let him into the garage. As I waited, I happened to glance into my rearview mirror. I thought I saw an Eskimo. That’s right, an Eskimo. Remember, the temperature at that time was about 48 degrees. I didn’t figure it was cold enough to be seeing Eskimos. I turned around in my seat and discovered that the Eskimo was actually a man walking down the street in a fur-lined parka. With the hood up. While wearing shorts. While I didn’t think it was cold enough for a parka, it sure wasn’t warm enough for shorts.
I should throw in here that while watching the Eskimo walk down the street, I also saw a man in a brown suit and tan trench coat, with a red bowtie and a Rex Harrison hat, riding a unicycle down the street. Ordinarily this would fall into the weird sightings category. However, I happen to know this man, and have seen him riding to work on his unicycle every day for the last five years. Suddenly it’s not so weird.
So once I finally got into the garage and got my car parked, I walked to the building. Standing outside of the building smoking a cigarette and chatting on his cell phone was a man wearing a red fur coat. It reminded me of the fake fur rugs that were so popular in the 70’s. In addition to the red fur, he had short, auburn hair cut in a marine-style haircut, a long, auburn, ZZ Top style beard, black-rimmed Buddy Holly glasses, and ears with multiple piercings from top to bottom. The kicker? I overheard his telephone conversation. He was discussing getting a facial, and how fabulous this certain spa is. I laughed all the way in to my office.
Just two days later, while shopping early morning in my favorite store to hate, Wal-Mart, I saw another strange being. Although this one was not strange at first glance. The woman was a checker in the check stand I chose that morning.
On a little side note, here, can someone please tell me why it is that in Wal-Mart, it can be 8:30 in the morning, and there will be no one else in the entire store, but you still have to stand in line to check out?
Ahem. As I was saying. So I was standing in line to check out, and I noticed the cashier is a very pretty girl, probably 19 or 20 years old. As I was standing there observing, I noticed how very skinny she was. At first I was a bit envious, since, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m not particularly excited with my own weight at this particular moment in time. But the more I looked at her, the more I realized she was not just skinny. She was emaciated. Her face was very deceiving, very pretty and not extraordinarily thin. She also was relatively well-endowed in the chest area, generally not something you see on women who have crossed over into the too thin category. However, I began to notice her thinness with her shoulders. They were the pointy type shoulders that have no padding on them whatsoever. As she turned to put the merchandise of the woman in line in front of me in a bag I noticed that her shoulder blades were very clearly defined. She did have a little muscle in her upper arms, but her forearms and wrists appeared to be just skin-covered bones. She, of course, had a very flat stomach, but the effect was ruined by the fact that her hip and pelvic bones were showing through her skin, and, therefore, through her skin-tight pants. I was kind of happy that the counter blocked my view of her from about the thighs down. I imagine she would not be pretty in a swimming suit. Something like this:
but without the wrinkles and minus about 50 years or so. The thing that was so amazing about this is that, even though I’ve seen pictures of people who are just skin-covered skeletons, I had never seen one close up before. It was a bit disturbing. I suppose she could be one of those people who are just like that naturally. But somehow I doubt it.
Then just this week, on my way home from work, I saw one more idiot driver stopped at a stoplight near my house. I managed to snap a picture of that one as well:
Please ignore the dashboard and the newly-formed crack in the windshield, and the Chevron station in the background. I have yet to figure out how to zoom on my new camera phone. If it’s difficult to tell, that is a small SUV of some sort, with a platform attached to the back by way of the trailer hitch. On the platform is a couch, made heavier, I’m sure, by the fact that it contains at least one recliner. The couch appeared to be heavy enough that it was weighing down the SUV’s rear end. For a few minutes I thought the thing was going to pop a wheelie when it started moving forward again. The couch appeared to have been tied down with only bungee cords, and had no covering over it whatsoever. Did I mention it was snowing at the time?
Finally, the weirdest thing I’ve seen in a long time happened on Easter Sunday. There was a picture taken of it as well:
For those of you that don’t know, that would be my husband on the back of his brother-in-law’s motorcycle. That is his bil on the front. I believe they were imitating a scene from Wild Hogs. My sister-in-law tells me that I don’t really want to know what she had to promise her husband to convince him to get on the motorcycle. I believe she’s right, but I don’t think he’ll ever live this one down.
I guess I really need to start about 12 years ago. My husband and I were engaged at that time. Since the wedding was going to take place in my home town and I was living in Utah, I was spending most weekends driving back and forth making arrangements for the big event. By the time spring rolled around, I was pretty tired. These things take a big toll, even when you’re young. So one Friday afternoon I was on my way to Wyoming. The interstate crosses over a small river called the Blacksfork along the way, about 60 miles or so west of my home town. As I crossed the river I glanced down, and though it passed by very quickly, I could have sworn that perched there, on a small island in the middle of the river, in the middle of the Wyoming plains, stood a flamingo. That’s right, the tall, pink, curved-billed, tropical bird that only resides in much warmer climates. By the time I had gotten home, I had convinced myself that I was so tired I was hallucinating. (It has happened before, but that’s a whole different story.) I did tell my mom what I thought I had seen, and after looking at me like I'd lost my mind, she gently reminded me that flamingos don’t live in Wyoming. I told her I knew, but I wasn’t sure I was really THAT tired yet. As it turns out, on her way back from Utah, after a trip down to pick up additional supplies for the wedding, she looked as she crossed the Blacksfork, and sure enough, there was a flamingo on the island. It seems a local resident put a plastic yard flamingo on the island as a practical joke. I expect my reaction is exactly what they intended.
Now we fast-forward a while….
A few months ago my husband, daughter and I were driving along one evening. We passed a building that used to be a corner gas station/convenience store, but is now vacant. Parked under the very tall gas station awning that is over the gas pumps was a semi truck. On top of the semi truck’s trailer was a ladder. On top of the ladder was a man hanging a sign on the side of the awning. There was also a second man standing on top of the trailer, holding the ladder steady. Because, you know, we wouldn’t want that ladder to slip. The man on top could fall and get hurt! My first thought was of those emails that go around with all the pictures of people doing stupid things. One in particular I know of is entitled “Men at Work”, and it seems to me it had several pictures included that this scene could have rivaled. My second thought was “Wonder what OSHA would think of that one.” I have no idea what the sign said.
We continued on our journey up the street, when not two blocks later we encountered this:
I know the picture is not very clear. It was taken in the evening as the sun was setting… from a moving car…through a window…with a cell phone…that has a scratch across the lens. It’s bound to be a bit blurry. So, in case you can’t tell what it is, that is a car (a Toyota for sure, though I don’t know which model) with a set of mattresses strapped to its roof. In addition, the idiot driving had the window rolled down (during the middle of winter, remember) with his arm hanging out and was holding on to the plastic the mattresses were wrapped in with his free hand. As if he could prevent them from falling/sliding off the top of that car just by holding on to them. I’d be more inclined to believe a hefty enough gust of wind would probably dislocate his shoulder before he’d be able to keep those things up there. And now the icing on the cake, (and my favorite part). Though you can’t see it in the picture, the man had on a pair of those black driving gloves with the knuckles cut out of them. Because I’m sure they help him grip the plastic oh so much better. My thought was simply, I’m taking a picture of this one.A couple of weeks later, as I was driving to work in the morning, I glanced over as I passed a Cadillac doing 25 mph under the speed limit. I nearly snapped my spine doing a double-take. In the driver’s seat of this vehicle was an old lady with a blue beehive hairdo (gotta love that one) who was literally sitting about 4 inches away from the steering wheel. She was sitting so close that she was practically laying across the steering wheel, her arms encircling it as if she had them wrapped around those giant rubber balls you buy out of cages in toy stores. I told my mom about this sighting, and she commented that she didn’t think the car manufacturers should be able to make the seats slide that far forward, for safety reasons. I told her that I didn’t think the seat was slid that far forward. The seat back actually appeared to be leaning forward, like it would if you were moving the seat to allow someone in or out of the back seat of a two-door vehicle. The woman looked almost as if she were trapped between the seat and the steering wheel. My mom also reminded me that shorter people have to sit closer to the pedals. I told her I didn’t think this woman was short, since she was sitting nearly a head taller than the height of the steering wheel. We weren’t dealing with the old lady from Ferris Bueller peeking out from between the steering wheel and the dashboard here! Needless to say, I was pretty happy I was able to pass her without incident.
About a week after that, I managed three strange sightings in one day. Actually, all in one crisp, 48 degree morning. As I was on my way to work, I passed a man on a motorcycle. A green motorcycle. Not just green, we’re talking neon lime green. And it was not just the accents that were green. It was the entire motorcycle. The man, at least, was wearing jeans and a black leather jacket, so for half a second I thought he might be a little bit normal. But then I saw his helmet. On top of the otherwise normal, black motorcycle helmet, there was a mohawk. A green mohawk. A neon lime green mohawk. It was a perfect match. Well, at least he was wearing a helmet.
Once I got to work, I found myself waiting in line to get into the parking garage. Seems an elderly man in the first car had no idea that he had to take a ticket to get the gate to open and let him into the garage. As I waited, I happened to glance into my rearview mirror. I thought I saw an Eskimo. That’s right, an Eskimo. Remember, the temperature at that time was about 48 degrees. I didn’t figure it was cold enough to be seeing Eskimos. I turned around in my seat and discovered that the Eskimo was actually a man walking down the street in a fur-lined parka. With the hood up. While wearing shorts. While I didn’t think it was cold enough for a parka, it sure wasn’t warm enough for shorts.
I should throw in here that while watching the Eskimo walk down the street, I also saw a man in a brown suit and tan trench coat, with a red bowtie and a Rex Harrison hat, riding a unicycle down the street. Ordinarily this would fall into the weird sightings category. However, I happen to know this man, and have seen him riding to work on his unicycle every day for the last five years. Suddenly it’s not so weird.
So once I finally got into the garage and got my car parked, I walked to the building. Standing outside of the building smoking a cigarette and chatting on his cell phone was a man wearing a red fur coat. It reminded me of the fake fur rugs that were so popular in the 70’s. In addition to the red fur, he had short, auburn hair cut in a marine-style haircut, a long, auburn, ZZ Top style beard, black-rimmed Buddy Holly glasses, and ears with multiple piercings from top to bottom. The kicker? I overheard his telephone conversation. He was discussing getting a facial, and how fabulous this certain spa is. I laughed all the way in to my office.
Just two days later, while shopping early morning in my favorite store to hate, Wal-Mart, I saw another strange being. Although this one was not strange at first glance. The woman was a checker in the check stand I chose that morning.
On a little side note, here, can someone please tell me why it is that in Wal-Mart, it can be 8:30 in the morning, and there will be no one else in the entire store, but you still have to stand in line to check out?
Ahem. As I was saying. So I was standing in line to check out, and I noticed the cashier is a very pretty girl, probably 19 or 20 years old. As I was standing there observing, I noticed how very skinny she was. At first I was a bit envious, since, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m not particularly excited with my own weight at this particular moment in time. But the more I looked at her, the more I realized she was not just skinny. She was emaciated. Her face was very deceiving, very pretty and not extraordinarily thin. She also was relatively well-endowed in the chest area, generally not something you see on women who have crossed over into the too thin category. However, I began to notice her thinness with her shoulders. They were the pointy type shoulders that have no padding on them whatsoever. As she turned to put the merchandise of the woman in line in front of me in a bag I noticed that her shoulder blades were very clearly defined. She did have a little muscle in her upper arms, but her forearms and wrists appeared to be just skin-covered bones. She, of course, had a very flat stomach, but the effect was ruined by the fact that her hip and pelvic bones were showing through her skin, and, therefore, through her skin-tight pants. I was kind of happy that the counter blocked my view of her from about the thighs down. I imagine she would not be pretty in a swimming suit. Something like this:
but without the wrinkles and minus about 50 years or so. The thing that was so amazing about this is that, even though I’ve seen pictures of people who are just skin-covered skeletons, I had never seen one close up before. It was a bit disturbing. I suppose she could be one of those people who are just like that naturally. But somehow I doubt it.Then just this week, on my way home from work, I saw one more idiot driver stopped at a stoplight near my house. I managed to snap a picture of that one as well:
Please ignore the dashboard and the newly-formed crack in the windshield, and the Chevron station in the background. I have yet to figure out how to zoom on my new camera phone. If it’s difficult to tell, that is a small SUV of some sort, with a platform attached to the back by way of the trailer hitch. On the platform is a couch, made heavier, I’m sure, by the fact that it contains at least one recliner. The couch appeared to be heavy enough that it was weighing down the SUV’s rear end. For a few minutes I thought the thing was going to pop a wheelie when it started moving forward again. The couch appeared to have been tied down with only bungee cords, and had no covering over it whatsoever. Did I mention it was snowing at the time?Finally, the weirdest thing I’ve seen in a long time happened on Easter Sunday. There was a picture taken of it as well:
For those of you that don’t know, that would be my husband on the back of his brother-in-law’s motorcycle. That is his bil on the front. I believe they were imitating a scene from Wild Hogs. My sister-in-law tells me that I don’t really want to know what she had to promise her husband to convince him to get on the motorcycle. I believe she’s right, but I don’t think he’ll ever live this one down.
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